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Write a story about someone who trusts or follows the wrong person.

Posted in Dramatic on May 2, 2025

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✍️ 54 stories

Teeth for Dreams

Submitted to Contest #301

Heavy rain swallowed the city, blurring the neon signs into long, glowing streaks. Myra tugged her collar tighter around her neck and quickened her pace as she rounded the corner. She cursed softly. No umbrella—again.It had been a long, long day at the office. For the past few of months, she’d worked her fingers to the bone, pushing through late nights and weekends for a promotion she was so adamant she’d earn. Only, someone else had gotten it instead. Cassie. Louder. Prettier. Someone who knew how to laugh at the right times and speak the r...

30 likes 8 comments 8
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Our Backyard

Submitted to Contest #301

The neighborhood I grew up in had a backyard—not the kind tucked away behind a single house, but a communal, neglected space that bore no likeness to the polished front. The two coexisted like parallel lines of reality—one visible, the other hidden—and we, the children, moved freely between them, as if slipping from daylight into dusk.Our building stood right at the edge of the asphalt, its façade facing the main road. Across the street stretched the shopping center, where our parents ran errands and traded pleasantries. It also hosted the n...

21 likes 5 comments 5
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The Continuing Education of Uomo d'Ingara

Submitted to Contest #301

The snow stopped by the time Sir Uomo d’Ingara spied the small town emerging out of the primordial forest. Every part of his body hurt, from his face down to his toes. The snow had kept his armor clean and gleaming, but underneath he suspected that he would need many days of rest and a doctor to tend to his wounds. He couldn’t stop here, so after catching his breath, he resumed limping towards the town, and hopefully a bed he could have for a bit. His foot was certainly broken, and there were red footprints behind him leading back to the ban...

15 likes 22 comments 22
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Marid's Game

Submitted to Contest #301

Ansa watched the flickering candlelight dance across the tan of Marid’s bare skin, held rapt by the hypnotic light show. She could have sworn he glowed with his own dark fire, one that pushed back against the solid shadows that encompassed them. Lit only by a few candles, they existed in a private haven of light amid the encroaching late hour. She suspected he went shirtless in an effort to distract her from the game that rested on the square table between them. It was frustratingly effective and she had to work to tear her eyes away from th...

14 likes 10 comments 10
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Her Bag

Submitted to Contest #301

We landed just after noon. The air hit me the second we stepped out of the terminal, hot, wet, heavy. It clung to my skin like a second shirt, and I couldn’t stop grinning. I was here, in a new country, with the girl I loved. It felt like the start of something. Maybe the start of everything.She nudged me with her shoulder as we waited for our bags. “Smells weird here,” she said, wrinkling her nose, but she was smiling too.“Like adventure,” I told her, and she laughed. God, I loved that laugh. It made my chest ache in the best way.She handed...

14 likes 4 comments 4
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Unbound

Submitted to Contest #301

This story contains violence, abuse, language, and overall dark themes. Enjoy!"I'm just looking to join a ship's crew. If you could point me toward any merchants or captains hiring, I'd appreciate it." I raise my voice higher to be heard above the bustling market crowd. I'd come during rush hour on purpose, but the clamor is making it hard to get my questions answered. "No, I don't know of any crews hiring. Now get lost, brat. You're getting in the way of my paying customers." The stall owner waves a meaty hand at me over the fragrant fruit...

13 likes 7 comments 7
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The Trees Know

Submitted to Contest #301

That day, the forest was cold. The air, piercing and frigid, every breath visible like a puff of smoke. The villagers had long since covered their crops to prevent the frost from reaching them. Now, they were inside their warm houses, huddled around the fire. Children eagerly awaited the first snow of the season. Adults prayed the winter would pass quickly. No one seemed to notice that one of their own was missing. The woods were far more observant. Owls hopped about on branches, scouring the ground for their next meal. Wolves howled in the...

12 likes 1 comment 1
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The Legend of the Last

Submitted to Contest #301

By the light of the waning moon, the village awakes. Curtains heavy enough to block the sun’s rays are pulled back, allowing in the once silent night. Even the animals wake, sensing the tension in the air as parents prepare for the possibility of losing their children. The evening is highly anticipated. Excitement shows clearly on some faces while others mourn their potential losses. It’s the older children, the ones who are almost adults, who look tired and slightly bored. “Once a year is too often,” Darren says, pulling on his boots as he ...

11 likes 2 comments 2
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Strawberries Aren't Berries

Submitted to Contest #301

Kris Kris sat on a stone bench beneath a weeping willow tree. Its branches wrapped around him, a makeshift shield from the glaring sun. Propped up on the young man’s leg was an inky black sword with a crimson belly. There was a piercing cry as he ran a whetstone along its side repeatedly. “Would’ve never found you all the way out here if it didn’t sound like you were strangling a banshee.” Kris looked up as a silver-haired man pushed a bundle of branches to the side, a smirk already plastered onto his face. From outside the canopy, his abn...

11 likes 2 comments 2
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Osiris 91

Submitted to Contest #301

A man finds himself alone in a bright and unfamiliar room. It has no windows and only two steel chairs inside.The door opens, and an older-looking woman with short white hair enters. She’s wearing a long white coat and cradles a dark tablet-shaped device under her arm. She sits in one of the twin chairs and instructs the man to do the same.“Who are you?” the man asks before moving.“First, have a seat, sir. Voluntarily or involuntarily, the choice is yours,” she warns.The man obeys and sits opposite the woman.“Please state your name,” she pol...

10 likes 6 comments 6
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The Passenger

Submitted to Contest #301

Rain streaked the windows of the Greyhound bus as it wound through the back roads of rural Pennsylvania. The vehicle rumbled with age, groaning over potholes and shifting under the weight of weary travelers. Seated in the middle row, Claire Forrester clutched her tote bag to her chest, her knuckles pale from the grip.She had left everything behind in New York—her job, her apartment, her entire life—after one mistake she couldn’t afford to let define her. The mistake wore a name: Darren Koenig. A charming investment banker who had promised he...

10 likes 1 comment 1
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An Empty World - 2 - The Road to Aberystwyth

Submitted to Contest #301

The morning they left the farmhouse was a bit too quiet, it was not with dread or with doubt, but with the kind of hush, that new quiet they were not quite used to yet, and with a sense of trepidation of what there was yet to come. Patsy stood by the kitchen door, her backpack snug against her shoulders, one hand resting on the weathered handle. Callum was already outside tightening the straps around the old camping gear from her father's bedroom. They had bundled it up and tied it together with some frayed rope they found in the barn. This ...

9 likes 1 comment 1
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Fallible Fortitude Foiled

Submitted to Contest #301

It was one of those laboriously lazy afternoons of an African bushveld, such that could only be brought on by the oppressive heat that blanketed this part of the world this time of the year. The airways sluggish, the leaves curled in spite of the heat, jealously guarding the precious moisture they’d drawn from the earth and even the buzzing sweat bees had slowed to a crawl. Still, the man in the shade was content. For this was the land of his birth and he had known it well all his life. The sweat on his exposed body made his black skin gleam...

8 likes 2 comments 2
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Precision Like That

Submitted to Contest #301

When I accepted the summer position at Fairview County Morgue, I told myself it was practical. A clinical environment. A line on my med school application. And yet, beneath that logic pulsed a darker thrill—something primal, something I didn’t yet have the language to name.The ad was blunt:Night Assistant Needed. No Experience Required. Must Be Comfortable Around Bodies.I was twenty-one, broke, and desperate to distinguish myself in a sea of pre-med overachievers. I thought proximity to death might lend me gravitas. That’s what I told myself...

8 likes 2 comments 2
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Ashes for the Faithful

Submitted to Contest #301

small content warning: mentions of war, death, and burning. Theophane turns a coin over in her fingers, studying the way the metal flashes in the golden light. She lightly brushed her thumb over the carved design. A woman, long hair that fell down her back, holding a finger to her lips. Unimaginably thin lines criss-crossed around her, jailing her behind them. She pursed her lips. Perhaps this was far too much. Money in her likeness was excessive. But she was here for a specific reason. What might seem as unrestrained to her would undoubt...

8 likes 1 comment 1
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